Heavily trailed reforms to special educational needs and disabilities (Send) education dominated coverage of last week’s schools white paper. But Bridget Phillipson’s policy of in-sourcing special provision, creating a new tier of support and making mainstream settings more inclusive, is the centrepiece of a broader agenda that also requires scrutiny.
All schools in future will have to join multi-academy trusts, including a new kind of trust established by councils. Ministers have also promised a drastic shrinking of the attainment gap between richer and poorer pupils, and new projects in north-east England and coastal areas aimed at raising standards. The way that £8bn in disadvantage funding is targeted is also being changed. Other measures include financial incentives for heads in challenging schools, stronger oversight of academy trusts and a clear signal of openness to flexible working arrangements.
The case for some of these changes is clearly made. The emphasis on teacher training and recruitment, and recognition of staffing challenges in disadvantaged areas, are welcome. So is tighter scrutiny of trusts, including executive pay. But it is far from obvious that compelling all schools to join trusts will bring about improvement as opposed to disruption. Successive Tory education secretaries made similar plans, only to abandon them when councils, unions and parents objected.
Levelling up education has always been Ms Phillipson’s strongest theme. As a Sunderland MP, she has a special interest in boosting outcomes among working-class pupils who lag behind. Rightly, she and her colleagues recognise that this challenge goes beyond schools. They want to rebuild the local services, including youth clubs, children’s centres and grassroots sports facilities, that were dismantled under austerity. The aim is to make communities more enriching places for young people. Their task now is to fight for funds to turn this vision into action.
A related priority is attendance and belonging – and the situation is troubling. The white paper cites evidence that a growing proportion of secondary-school pupils do not feel that they “belong”. This reflects an international trend, but is particularly pronounced in England, so a fresh emphasis on engagement is welcome. A new annual survey of pupils should supply important data. Formal clarification of expectations on parents is another positive step that, if handled well, ought to improve home-school relations and reduce conflict. The decline in school attendance remains a worrying legacy of the pandemic.
Not everything in a white paper goes on to become law, but it should provide a clear guide to the government’s thinking. There is a risk that this one is too diffuse, particularly given the effort that will be required to get Send reforms right, not to mention the enormous challenge of AI. New technology is already reshaping teaching and assessment, and has profound implications for the future of work.
As these proposals are developed, ministers must explain how the promised “self-improving system” will actually work. Spreading good practice is not as easy as it sounds, and some recent initiatives aimed at boosting lower achievers have fallen flat. Ms Phillipson did well to clearly set out her Send reforms and secure funding for them. Ministers must decide which reforms define this agenda and concentrate political capital there, or risk a scattergun programme that promises much and shifts little.
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